Sonia Vaccaro, a clinical and forensic psychologist expert in gender violence, coined the concept of vicarious violence in 2012, following the story of a woman whose son was murdered in a “protected” and “monitored” site.
“By this, what I mean is that when we are facing aggressors and murderers, no figure of protection is valid,” he said, noting that since 2012 there have been more than 2,000 cases worldwide.
Vaccaro stated that the disappearance of children is the cruelest punishment for a mother, “tearing a child from his mother’s protective attachment shows that this individual is not interested in the well-being of that boy or girl and that he only seeks harm that woman who was allowed to leave him.
Cecilia del Refugio Palomo Caudillo, an expert professor in gender perspective, highlighted that when a woman is told that “they are going to hit her where it hurts the most”, they are not referring to any part of her body, but precisely to her daughters and sons. .
This, “because the abuser who exercises this type of violence sees his claims of control and power backed by the justice system, it also becomes institutional violence.”
He referred to the case of Ana and Olivia, two girls aged one and six, kidnapped, murdered and thrown into the sea by their father, who had previously threatened their mother by telling them that he would not see them again.
